Flight From Honour

18

The spectators around the front of the hangar had taken up the shout for a doctor, and it always amazed Ranklin how many doctors you could find as long as you weren’t waiting in their consulting-rooms, because they got two in as many minutes. The first was thin and elegant, a spectator taking the afternoon off from Barley Street.

He saw the knife, and the jerk of surprise almost dislodged his topper. “Good God, man, have you called the police?”

“I am the police – sort of,” Ranklin said, kneeling to hold the bloody rags of Falcone’s shirt around the knife that still stuck from his back.

“Then you haven’t done a very good job.”

“Set me an example, then,” Ranklin snarled. But then what was probably the aerodrome doctor arrived, stout and busy, with a bulging bag ready to tackle crash victims. He said: “My God,” but got straight down to work, muttering: “At least you didn’t pull out the knife.”

Ranklin had already ripped the piece of paper from the knife; he stood up and tried to read what it said under the dripping blood, but it was just a rough pencilled drawing.

The crowd had formed a circle trying to see, but not too much, around the group that still included Andrew, Corinna and now the Harley Street doctor, who had decided his duty lay in comforting the best-dressed woman in sight.

Ranklin snatched her away. “Did you see where O’Gilroy went?”

“No, I was look-”

“He must be following the man.” He thought for a moment. “I need the car.”

“I told Dixon we wouldn’t want him until-”

“Can you drive it?”

“Of course.”

“Then let’s get moving.” He grabbed her arm, but she needed no more urging. They left the doctor saying: “I say. . .” without having to decide just what.

A couple of policemen came trotting through the crowd as they reached the Daimler. “Head for the station first,” Ranklin ordered. “They’re probably on foot . . . Damn it! – how did they know Falcone would be here?”

The car had an electric starter, but either it disapproved of leaving early or Corinna hadn’t mastered it, because Ranklin ended up hand-cranking the heavy engine. He climbed in beside her soggy with sweat, and found the closed interior like a furnace. His temperature wasn’t lowered by the spectators along the track, who certainly disapproved of anybody leaving at this moment, and by the time they passed through the tunnel to the exit, he reckoned O’Gilroy was well over five minutes ahead.

And thanks to the unpaying crowd outside, they clawed nothing back on the road to the station. As they crossed the bridge that led to the London side, steam and smoke welled up from a train pulling out beneath them, on the up-line to London.

Ranklin tried to think where on earth this line ran – then realised he knew it like his own signature since it went on down to Aldershot, home of the British Army. Next stop would be Walton – no use – then: “Esher! Turn around!”

O’Gilroy had had an anxious few minutes waiting on Weybridge platform before the two men caught up, chatting and smiling so casually that they had to be professionals in their own line. Well, he thought, that makes three of us, and planned just where he must join the train. Assuming it was corridorless, he needed a compartment near but not next to them, and a window seat facing their way to see if they got off before Waterloo. Meanwhile, he stayed well back in the shadow of the station canopy, trying to keep his face hidden. He wished he had a newspaper – the shadower’s best friend – but most of all, he wished he had a gun.

Corinna sent the Daimler storming through the wooded lanes with the indignity of a runaway hearse, and Ranklin would have imagined chickens fluttering out of their path if he could also imagine any chicken fast enough. He braced himself against the corner of the seat and said nothing to distract Corinna’s attention. She was angry – at events, at the man O’Gilroy was following – and for the moment all life was on a par with a chicken’s.

Then they turned onto a long straight beside Burwood Park, she changed up a gear and sat back from her jockey-like hunch.

“Would you mind if I smoked?” Ranklin asked shakily.

“Burst into flames. Was Senator Falcone dead?”

“Not then. I just don’t know how bad.” He lit a cigarette.

“Who was it? How did it happen?”

“Because I let it happen. I knew it could happen, but thought . . . They left a sort of note,” he remembered and took it, limp with still-tacky blood, from his pocket. “It’s just – don’t look!” as the car swerved; “-it’s just a drawing of a skull, knife, gun and bottle. Symbol of a Serbian secret society. Also known as the Black Hand, though I think that’s getting mixed up with one of the Italian criminal gangs.”

“What have they got against Falcone?”

“I don’t know exactly. I’m sure he could have told us more . . .” His voice trailed off, then he said bitterly: “And I had a pistol in my pocket all the time . . .” He was wishing it had been in O’Gilroy’s pocket quite as much as O’Gilroy did now.

O’Gilroy only remembered Waterloo as a big, sprawling station with more exits than a sieve. So he was off the train and walking briskly towards the ticket barrier – the one bottleneck he could count on – before it had stopped completely. Beyond it, there was a news-stand just to his right and he had almost reached it when he recognised Ranklin already there, buying a Star and muttering from the side of his mouth: “Have you still got him in sight?”

“Them. There’s two of them. How’d ye get here?”

“Same train. Caught it at Esher. Got on the very front. Didn’t want them to see me waiting, they might recog-”

“Fine.” O’Gilroy hid his surprise that Ranklin had learnt so much. “They’ve jest come through . . . waiting under the clock . . . mebbe wondrin’ what to do . . . or if they’re followed . . .”

Ranklin opened his paper, apparently eager to see stock market prices or racing results. “I’ve got a revolver on me.”

“Thank God for that.”

“So we could just grab them.”

“And what proof are we having of anything? I saw nothing worth saying in court; what about yeself?”

The stall’s proprietor was looking suspiciously at them: two men not looking at each other but muttering like two old lags in the exercise yard. Ranklin didn’t notice; he was realising how weak their situation was. He had merely been following O’Gilroy, now it seemed O’Gilroy had merely been following someone he thought was involved.

“They’re moving,” O’Gilroy said, apparently having been watching through his right ear. “Going for a cab, I’m thinking.”

Ranklin risked a glance and frowned. “I know that one, the taller. He was outside the Ritz last week.”

“Will he be knowing ye?”

“Probably.” The confrontation in the taxi had been brief but vivid.

Still, they had to take the risk, strolling after the two towards the lines of motor-taxis and horse-drawn cabs waiting on the road that ran through the station, where the two chose a hansom. London was the most motor-conscious city in Europe, so perhaps it was not surprising that foreigners, and particularly unsophisticated ones, should feel happier behind a horse. And that left their followers with the flexibility of a far speedier motor-taxi.

Since taking up his new trade, Ranklin had often wondered what would happen if he asked a taxi-driver to “follow that cab”. Now he learned that he got a surly up-and-down stare that made him wish his shoes were newer and less dusty. He was about to invent a complex tale about being a solicitor in a divorce case when O’Gilroy slapped a half-guinea into the drivers hand, said: “It’s got a brother waiting at t’other end,” and pushed Ranklin inside. So that was how it was done.

But almost immediately, the sheer speed of the taxi gave them a problem. To stay behind the cab, they had to crawl conspicuously, being passed by every other motor vehicle. So Ranklin told the driver to overtake and wait on the far side of Waterloo Bridge. There the traffic thickened and they could follow invisibly around the empty building site of Aldwych and into Kingsway. There they had to speed up and overtake again, stopping once more at the junction with High Holborn. The cab clopped past, keeping to the right for a turn ahead.

Ranklin was just thinking that this game of leapfrog couldn’t go on much longer, when he realised what that turn implied: “Clerkenwell. They’re heading for Little Italy.”

“Where they’d be having plenty of friends?” O’Gilroy suggested. “I think I’ll be taking yer pistol now, Captain.”

Ranklin hesitated. But if the situation were going to need a pistol, it would also need O’Gilroy’s rapid decisiveness. He passed it over, then leant forward to direct the driver. And decided to be – fairly – frank: “Where would you say the Italian quarter begins?”

“Yer mean past the police station?”

“Is there one?”

“Corner o’ Gray’s Inn. The wops live a bit furver, past Rosebery Avenue, but I’m not going dahn them hills.”

“No-” the police station was tempting, but perhaps for later; “-no, just put us down past the Avenue.”

They had time to pay off the taxi and cross to the “wrong” side of the road, to be less conspicuous. But the Clerkenwell Road was a main thoroughfare and tram route, where nobody looked out of place, something that would change a few yards into one of the side streets.

The two in the cab obviously hadn’t given an exact address, just stopped the cab at the opposite pavement and stood chatting and glancing around until it had gone. Then they strolled, unhurried in the evening sun, further along the road before turning off down a narrow, steep side street.

Ranklin and O’Gilroy crossed the road again and, with Ranklin at least feeling that he was walking into a spotlight, passed the invisible frontier into Back Hill Street. It was some help that the two they were following, dressed to be inconspicuous at Brooklands, also showed up well in the grubbily colourful crowd that bustled around them. But they walked with confidence while Ranklin felt he was lurking. Then they vanished into an alley.

O’Gilroy took several sudden strides before Ranklin, less familiar with such terraced houses, had worked out that the alley must lead to a tiny courtyard and the back doors to houses on both sides. But which one? How O’Gilroy managed a glance into the alley while still looking straight ahead, Ranklin couldn’t tell, but he had seen which way the men turned at the far end.

“The first house,” he murmured, when Ranklin caught up. “On the right. Will we be grabbing them?”

But Ranklin was having doubts; they had pushed their luck a long way already. “We haven’t really got grounds even for a citizen’s arrest.”

O’Gilroy glared. “If it makes ye happier, I’ll swear I saw the little one stick the knife in. If’n we get them now, they’ll be loaded wid evidence, tickets for Brooklands and the like.”

“No. Let the police do it. We can have them round here in five minutes.”

O’Gilroy’s expression was pure exasperation, but when Ranklin turned back, he followed.

The police station stood isolated on the corner of Gray’s Inn gardens, a red-brick fortress of law and order four storeys high with a semi-basement – probably the cells – beneath. They were shown into a small room, anonymous if that word included shiny, bilious green paintwork, while the desk sergeant called a uniformed inspector.

Ranklin presented his (genuine) calling card and began: “There was an attempted murder – it may be a murder by now – at Brooklands aerodrome this afternoon. I know that’s for the Surrey police-” the Inspectors beefy face had begun to look resigned; “-but we’ve followed two men, suspects, from there to a house in Back Hill Street.”

Now the expression was wariness. “Which house is that, sir?”

Ranklin gave the number and knew that the Inspector recognised it. He looked at the floor, the walls and the window, then said: “I’d best telephone to Surrey about this, sir. When you say ‘suspects’, you mean you didn’t see them commit the act?”

“Saw it wid me own two eyes,” O’Gilroy lied flatly.

“Did you, sir? I don’t think I got your name . . .”

“Tom Gorman.”

“Yes, well, that’s certainly a help, sir. But I’d best confirm exactly what happened. It shouldn’t take long.”

Ranklin demanded: “Couldn’t you at least put a guard on the house, send men to watch it, or-?”

“If they’re in that house, they’re not going anywhere else, sir. It’s what you might call the end of the line. And – between us, sir – if they’re what you think they are, what they’re doing now is concocting an alibi with a dozen witnesses to say they’ve been there all day, nowhere near Brooklands.”

Telepathically, Ranklin heard O’Gilroy saying “I told you so.” But aloud, it was: “Ah, then I’ll jest be stepping out for a smoke.” And his voice was so understanding and reasonable that Ranklin looked at him sharply.

The Inspector frowned. “We’ll need a statement from you, sir.”

“But only when yez sure there’s something to state about, isn’t that right? I’ll be back in a tick or so.”

“That gentleman,” the inspector nodded at the closing door, “would be a colleague of yours, sir?”

Ranklin managed to get his imagination onto a new tack. “He’s an engineer – working on our aeronautical side. Very competent chap,” he added, afraid that he was about to be proved right.

Ten minutes later the Inspector was saying: “. . .they’ve got the Senator to a hospital in Kingston, and he’s still breathing, so . . . And no other eye-witnesses so far. It seems that everybody was busy staring at the aeroplanes – as perhaps you were yourself, sir.”

“It’s what we were there for. But by now, if what you said is correct, those two we followed will have a cast-iron alibi.”

“These Italians do stick together. And we’d just be stirring up trouble if we went barging in . . .”

And let the Surrey police worry about their own unsolved cases, Ranklin realised.

O’Gilroy walked in. His dark hair stuck out untidily from under his cap, but he spoke quite calmly. “I think ye’ve reason enough for going in there now, Inspector. Feller took a shot at me.” He laid an unfamiliar pistol on the table. “So I took a shot at him – ye know how one thing leads to t’other? Yer revolver, Captain.”

“What happened to him?” the Inspector demanded.

“Ye’d best go see. He’ll be waiting.”

The Inspector grabbed the revolver, sniffed its barrel, then shook out the cartridges. Three were empty shells. He goggled at O’Gilroy. “Are you confessing to a murder?”